Jens Lekman announces European tourdates

What better way to test out songs from your forthcoming album than to play them live in your native continent? Swedish troubadour Jens Lekman has recently announced an upcoming European jaunt to tease fans with some new material and delight them with old jams. No word yet on when his new album can be expected, but let’s all collectively cross our fingers for sometime soon, and maybe it will magically appear this fall. Lekman will be joined by a full band for all tourdates. Who does he think he is? Thom Yorke?

Yo! How’s it going? Enjoying your day so far? I am. Kickin’ it on the beach, enjoying a delicious treat while I get my toes rubbed by a dude who looks like he’d rather be punching in faces somewhere. But today he’s got his munroe toe rub on the go. Good day for me, bad day for him. I gots me some toe cheeze. You know, the little white crumbly bits that collect when you don’t wash properly. Normally I wash just fine, but I’m on a made-up vacation in me brain, so I can do whatever I want.

NOW I’M HANDGLIDING WITH THE DUDE WHO OWNS VIRGIN, WHAT’S HIS BRANSON.

And now I’m listening to Raaka of the Dilated Peoples rock an album, Crown of Thorns, all by himself. It’s pretty sweet. Massaging the ol’ head meat while layin’ out a smooth flow. I’m all about that. You should be too. Probably gonna be a great album to toss on while you sip some wine and pontificate about brainy shit like a foreign conflict or why it takes so long to get your passport renewed.

It drops July 20 via Decon Records and features production from Evidence, DJ Babu, the Alchemist, and more! Also Chali 2Na, and KRS-One show up! KRS always brings it, so expect awesome sauce! Woo!

I hate a-ha, but that hasn’t stopped them from reuniting again this past year and touring. The Norwegian trio are currently working through what they promise will be their final North American concerts. The group will play their final show of all-time in Oslo, Norway on December 4, 2010. The date marks the 25th anniversary of the last time the band did anything significant, the release of their debut album, Hunting High and Low, and its nefarious single, “Take On Me.”

“Take On Me,” a song so evil that hearing only a fragment of its refrain can cause one to privately hum its melody for up to six days, was released just over a month after the date of my birth. Since then, it has resonated vestigially through American pop culture, playing an average of 375 times a day on American radio. Averaged out, this means that every day, “Take On Me” plays once every three minutes and fifty seconds. The song is three minutes and forty-six seconds long, leaving four seconds before the song begins to play again. This also means that “Take On Me” has been playing for 57.5 seconds of every minute of my life.

It is in the remaining two and a half seconds that I plot my revenge. I’m coming for you, a-ha. I’M COMING FOR YOU. I’M COMING FOR YOUR LOVE, OKAY? TAAAAAAKE ONNNN MEEEEEEEE… DAMN YOU, A-HA! YOU WILL NOT BE REMEMBERED! YOU’LL BE GONE! IN A DAY OR TWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Pinback are no strangers to touring, so for their West Coast tour this summer, the core duo of Rob Crow and Zach Smith have decided to switch things up a little bit. Instead of touring with a backing band, Crow and Smith have decided to go out on the road alone and present their music as a duo, dubbed “Pinback Presents the Rob and Zach Show.”

According to a message from Smith: “The idea is to present our music at times in a more broken down manner very similar sounding to how it might be for Rob and I when we’re coming up with a song for the very first time. Hopefully, this way we can create a new atmosphere for a familiar song.”

Smith also notes in his message that the tour is by no means an end to Pinback’s full band live show, so stop cutting your wrists, readers.

We may be a lot of things (deadbeat uncles and aunts, bedwetters, secret Toto enthusiasts), but we would be remiss if we let this story of low-life shitheadery go unreported. Miami’s true hard cases Torche had a vanload of music equipment and personal pieces stolen by thieving bastards after a gig at the Congress Theater in Chicago on May 14.

Although this sort of crime would make even the most lily-liveredest of acts go postal, the band itself has taken the whole thing like professional troopers. After quickly organizing a few small DIY gigs, Torche will meet back up with Coheed and Cambria and Circa Survive, who they were to shadow in Canada (until the worthless douchebags took a number of band member passports) for the remaining scheduled dates. It may be a potential pitfall of touring, but it still sucks so much whenever this happens. If you can’t make it to any upcoming Torche shows please consider making a donation to TLCforTorche@gmail.com at PayPal here.

It’s hard to imagine Nic Offer toiling over anything (because it’s hard to imagine Nic Offer sitting still for five seconds), but it must happen. Proof: !!! records. Offer and the rest of boys ‘n’ girls in !!! tend to take their good, sweet time, releasing a new record every three years or so. And because it’s been over three years since the release of the dance-punk outfit’s last record, Myth Takes, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, on August 24, Warp will release Strange Weather, Isn’t It?, !!!’s fourth record.

Following in the footsteps of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Depeche Mode (and Liars, though I doubt the new !!! record will bear much resemblance to Drum’s Not Dead), the group trekked out to Berlin to record the new album. “Everyone’s got a Berlin record in them and I guess we just wanted to see what ours would sound like,” Offer said. As it turns out, only about a fourth of the record was recorded in Berlin (with the rest being split between New York and Sacramento), so it’s more like 25% of a Berlin record. Still, the group claims to have drawn inspiration from the wisdom of the frequently Berlin-based Brian Eno, so there’s still something to that whole “Berlin record” thing.

Strange Weather, Isn’t It? will mark the recorded unveiling of !!!’s new lineup. Where the group could once double as a functional basketball team, the lineup has, with the departure of John Pugh and Justin Vandervolgen, been whittled down to a recording lineup of Offer, guitarist Mario Andreoni, horn player/keyboardist Daniel Gorman, and saxophonist/percussionist Allan Wilson, with drummer Paul Quattrone and vocalist Shannon Funchess on board for their live show. The new record will also be the group’s first since the tragic death of drummer Jerry Fuchs last year (TMT News).